Living in Data
A Citizen's Guide to a Better Information Future
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In a world where data is constantly mined, processed, and used for profit and power, how can we become active citizens rather than passive inhabitants of the digital landscape?
Jer Thorp's analysis of the word "data" in 10,325 New York Times stories written between 1984 and 2018 reveals a striking trend: alongside classic companions like "information" and "digital," we now find "scandal," "misinformation," "ethics," "friends," and "play." In Living in Data, Thorp explores what it means to live in a data-driven society in the twenty-first century, where we are incessantly extracted from, classified, categorized, sold, and surveilled.
Threading a compelling narrative through hippo attacks, glaciers, school gymnasiums, colossal rice piles, and active minefields, Living in Data reminds us that the future of data is still unwritten. Thorp shows us how to transcend facts and figures to find more visceral ways to engage with data and tell new stories about its potential uses.
Featuring the author's original illustrations, Living in Data redefines what data is and reimagines who gets to speak its language. This timely and inspiring book presents a path toward a more just and democratic data future, empowering readers to harness its power for positive change.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Data artist Thorp takes an enlightening excursion through humans' ever-changing relationship with data in his spot-on debut. To "tell the real story of data," Thorp writes, one must look beyond Facebook and machine learning, and toward "places where the story bubbled up a century ago, and the places where we can find new stories just beginning to flow." To that end, he recounts his adventures through the Angolan wilderness collecting data about plant and animal life, atop a melting glacier as part of an effort to track the ice's movement, and 1,100 meters below the surface of the ocean in search of methane "cold seeps." Central is the tension between two futures: one in which "living in data" means being acted on largely without one's knowledge, and a people-first alternative in which individuals and communities maintain sovereignty over their data. With a gift for explaining technical matters—he describes algorithms via a comparison to gym class team selection—Thorp makes accessible the technical, moral, and political implications of data collection and distribution. Those with qualms about living in an ever more data-driven world owe it to themselves to pick this up.
